Afghan Shiites seek Taliban protection

Kabul: Outside a Shiite  shrine in Kabul, four  armed Taliban fighters  stood guard as worshippers filed in for Friday  prayers. Alongside them  was a guard from Afghanistan’s mainly Shiite  Hazara minority, an automatic rifle slung over his  shoulder.

It was a sign of the strange  new relationship brought  by the Taliban’s takeover  of Afghanistan in August.  The Taliban, Sunni hardliners who for decades targeted the Hazaras as heretics, are now their only  protection against a more  brutal enemy: the Islamic  State group.

Since seizing power, the  Taliban have presented  themselves as more moderate, compared with their  first rule in the 1990s.  Courting international  recognition, they vow to  protect the Hazaras as a  show of their acceptance  of the country’s minorities. But many Hazaras  still deeply distrust the  insurgents-turned-rulers,  who are overwhelmingly  ethnic Pashtu, and are  convinced they will never  accept them as equals in  Afghanistan.

Hazara community leaders say they have met repeatedly with Taliban leadership, asking to take part  in the government, only to  be shunned. -(AP)